Hey Sba i am putting together a PC mainly for gaming although it could be used for graphics/editing at a later date, budget is around £1200 maybe a few hundred above at the most. I'm from the UK so i cant buy from newegg or any of those sites, mostly Scan.com. I would like it to be pretty quiet but with still good cooling.

Soundcard: Asus xonar dg 5.1 -http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-xonar-dg-51-pci-sound-card-and-headphone-ampifier-oem ( ? not sure if i really need this, i have old turtle beach x1 headphones i use to game with and they are rgeat but this might not effect them?)[color=#FF0000] £22.21[/color]Monitor: Benq xl2420t - http://www.scan.co.uk/products/24-benq- ... 2-10001-2m(having trouble finding a good gaming monitor from £200-300 most seem to have conflicting reviews,im kind of an fps perfectionist so i dont know if the card and i5 would be able to keep the same fps on a 27 inch as a 24 inch screen) £278.69

Total: £1,536.36

Any advice or critisisms would be most welcomed

Last edited by Jjay on Sun Nov 18, 2012 10:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

Sites:Scan.co.uk is a great site, though you could end up spending at least £50 more than the same build at ebuyer.Ebuyer.com is probably the cheapest place and with free shipping.Overclockers.co.uk, Novatech.co.uk and Dabs.com are all worth looking at too, sometimes there are great deals there.

Changes to the TR Sweet Spot build:You don't need to spend £1500, nowhere near that in fact - The "sweet spot" as listed should set you back about £800 over here without screens. The upgrade to an i5-3570K makes sense - you can pretty much choose any cooler you want if you're going to overclock but the Coolermaster Hyper 212 is good value, as is the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7. Overclocking the 3570K is as easy as going into the BIOS and setting the turbo multiplier to 42. Sure, you can overclock more than that but 4.2GHz should be more than fast enough for gaming and it's pretty unlikely that a 3570K won't reach this on stock voltage. You can also run the "auto overclock" utility included with the motherboard drivers if you don't even want to fiddle with the BIOS.

Audio:I would skip the Xonar audio since pretty much everything runs without feature or quality loss on the most basic of audio codecs, even those built into things like USB headphoness.

Screens:As for screens, a Korean 27" from ebay for about £250 is what I'm using now and I prefer it to all the 120Hz gaming panels I've seen. If you want to get an idea for how it looks, wander into an Apple store and look at the 27" Thunderbolt display and then wander into a Dixons/Currys and look at the TN gaming screens. Getting a game to run fluidly at 120 frames a second is a lot harder than you'd expect, often you have to sacrifice a lot of the graphics settings so I would instead aim for 60FPS at the highest quality possible instead. UK buyers seems to be positive about the ebay seller called TA Planet who does the basic Shimian QH270-Lite for about £200 (£40-odd import duty).

CaseI see you're getting a large case, big PSU and full ATX board for potential future SLI upgrades; There's no reason to do this unless you genuinely want more than about six drives;

Upgrading to a more powerful graphics card is usually better than running two of them - you will avoid any SLI/Crossfire performance penalties, micro-stuttering is still a problem for dual-GPU solutions and two cards generate twice as much heat and noise whilst sucking down more power (and requiring a beefier PSU).

Sticking to a single card also means you can get a smaller case and motherboard which typically means it's quieter because less air needs to be moved to completely cycle all of the hot air out of the case. One of the best, coolest, quietest cases on the market is the Silverstone TJ08B-E, which is a positive-pressure system and shouldn't need you to buy any extra fans. However, the Fractal Define Mini or Arc Mini are also excellent choices.

My suggestion:£175.25 = Intel Core i5 3570K - easy overclocking£79.42 = Asus P8Z77-M Z77 - good basic mATX board with solid capacitors and no silly features.£24.99 = Crucial 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600Mhz Ballistix 1.5V 9-9-9-24 - Intel/Micron's own-brand memory, which is plenty good enough.£80.00 = SAMSUNG 128GB 830 Series SSD - One of the best drives, you could get a 256GB if you fancy it (better cost/GB)£54.99 = 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black - If you're just using it for media storage, perhaps get a 2TB Seagate 5900rpm drive.£239.99 = Sapphire HD 7950 3GB Boost (925MHz) - Competitive with the GTX670 but you get more free games, it's significantly cheaper, and this model has good quiet fans.£69.99 = Be Quiet Pure Power 630W Modular PSU - Honestly, you could get away with a 450W PSU. This is quiet, well-made, well-reviewed, modular and has adequate headroom for upgrades.£69.99 - W7 Home Premium w/SP1 x64 OEM - Assuming you don't already have a license you can transfer.-------------------------------------------------------------------£795 total from Ebuyer and then picking up a Silverstone TJ08B-E case from wherever it's cheapest.

Obviously chop and change parts as desired, this is just my recommendation and I'm sure it'll be one of many in this forum.

Last edited by Chrispy_ on Mon Nov 12, 2012 10:04 am, edited 2 times in total.

Some people ask me why I have always enclosed my signature in spoiler tags; There is a good reason for that, but I can't elaborate without giving away the plot twist.

I like Chrispy's suggestions. I can't see anything I would change.Fractal Design Define MiniSilverstone TJ08B-EBoth are good cases. I have the PS07B which is the same as the TJ08B-E except with plastic face and 2 - 120mm front fans. It was a pain in the rear to build with and get everything tucked away nicely. But, if you're not one to go digging around inside your case and/or swapping out components multiple times a year, its really great. It was a one-time headache for me, now I love it.

Regarding the GTX 670 (TR's Review) vs 7950...The 670 definetly gets you more performance, but the question is do you need it and/or is it worth the price difference. I think that's something you'll have to decide for yourself. To me, the 7950 performance is plenty even for the resolutions you're talking about. Too bad they're not offered with the sweet 4-game bundle like the 7950's in the US. (at least not that I see) That'd be no contest.

Thanks for the reply guys, taken a look at your suggestions and i'm going to make some changes.

Right now looks like:

i5-3570k Asus P8Z77-M Z77 (heard good things about the maximus v gene, don't know whether the extra £40 is worth it?)Corsair vengeance 8gb ( I already have this at home)SAMSUNG 128GB 830 Series SSD (perhaps even a 60gb ssd, only planning on installing windows 7 on the ssd)1TB Western Digital Caviar BlackW7 Home Premium w/SP1 x64 OEM650w psu

I think i will still go with the 670 just because ive seen it in action and i would rather have the assurance of more performance if its ever needed.

Same with the fractal define r4, im a big fan of the r4 and i would prefer the slightly larger interior, noise dampening and the use of 140mm fans. But i suppose i might as well use a atx motherboard with it then. Unless you guys really would recommend the tj08b and mAtx over it.

I decided to go with the Asus VE28h 24 inch monitor because its a cookie cutter gaming monitor.

I am still not sure about a sound card, i do use old surround sound headphones for gaming and i will probably be upgrading them sometime in the future so i don't know if the motherboard sound card will be good enough?

As for the CPU overclocking, what difference in terms of performance (fps mostly) would there be between 4.3ghz and 4.5ghz, if any at all.

Jjay wrote: im a big fan of the r4 and i would prefer the noise dampening and the use of 140mm fans

The Define Mini is just the mATX version of the R3/R4. It has noise dampening foam also. In my experience, you don't gain much from 140mm fans as opposed to 120mm fans. Ultimately it's your choice though. The R4 is a great case as well.

That's 3 free AAA games you're sacrificing by going with the GTX 670. But if you wouldn't otherwise buy those games, I suppose the value goes down, probably not to zero though. Again, your choice, we're only here to make suggestions. Here is a graph comparing the two cards at 2560 x 1600 (typical for 27" monitors) where the GTX 670 averages about 4fps more in 99th percentile framerates. That lead opens up to around 8fps when tested at 1080p which is typical for 24" monitors. The comparison is really GTX660Ti vs 7950 or GTX670 vs 7970 so yes, the GTX670 and 7950 are in different performance categories. Keep in mind though, the games used are the most demanding titles available. Also pay attention to the video detail levels used in testing. BF3 on Ultra and Crysis 2 with DX11 and Hi-Res textures on Ultra are super demanding on a GPU and both the GTX670 and 7950 are pushing over 40fps in 99% of frames.

Thanks for the reply, just happened to be checking the site as soon as you posted if it seems like im lurking haha.

The games included with the 7950 are not my kind of games really, Scan.com has a 2 game bundle with the 670 of Assassins creed 3 and Borderlands 2 which i would prefer and was planning on buying anyway. If the games were reversed it might sway me but i think im set on the gigabyte 670 windforce 3x, sorry if it sounds like im ignoring you.

Same with the r4,i had my eye on the r3 for a few years and i think if i did decide to go with the define mini i would end up regretting it later on especially since they are so closely priced theres not much to loose.

Once again i really appreciate your help Dpete and Chrispy and im sorry if i sound headstrong about certain things im just afraid of changing my mind after its built.

Nothing wrong with your decision, the £60 of games you actually want with your GTX670 purchase makes it more than worthwhile.

Case choices are very much down to personal preference. I like small, quiet and unobtrusive cases, so for me the TJ08-E is better than the R4. On the other hand, the R4 is still a very solid choice of case which will still cool well, run quietly, and will likely be easier to assemble a system in than the mATX cases.

My one concern with cases like the R4 is that by the time you've spent the extra money putting fans in all the empty fan bays (you only get 2 of the 7 fans included, and the best configuration is 3 intakes and 3 exhausts) you could have instead bought yourself a more upmarket case with superior stock cooling such as the Corsair Obsidian 550D/650D. It's a whole new level of performance and build quality for basically the same money.

Leaving an R4 running with lots of empty fan mounts just defocusses the cooling, creating several loops where cool air comes in and leaks out again before it's even been near anything that needed cooling. I'm splitting hairs though - you have to understand that in terms of overall noise, even a 'leaky' R4 can be pretty quiet.

Some people ask me why I have always enclosed my signature in spoiler tags; There is a good reason for that, but I can't elaborate without giving away the plot twist.

The R4 focuses on quiet operation while the Obsidian 550D/650D cases are more "cooling performance" oriented. I don't think we're comparing apples to apples there. Plus the R4 (2 fans included) is $90, a 120mm fan is ~$10, and the Obsidian 550D (which comes with 3 fans) is $120. That's 3 fans difference. The Obsidian 650D is $146+, which is even further removed.

You're going to have higher system temps with the R4 compared to the Obsidians, that's just a fact of life for "quiet cases." The most important thing to note is what Chrispy said about not suffing every last fan slot in the R4 with a fan. The less fans you use, the quieter the system will be. I would buy 1 more 140mm fan, use 1 in the front panel, 1 in the bottom (intake), and 1 out the back. That gives you positive air pressure inside the case and one fan blowing cool air directly at the GPU.

1: Is it even worth trying to overclock to 4.5ghz or will there be no difference from 4.3ghz?

2: Since i will be using surround sound headphones should i get another sound card instead of using onboard? i know you said you would skip it but i thought i should mention i do use surround sound headphones.

I don't know what games you want to play. The number of games that stress even an i5-2500K can be counted on your fingers. A full BF3 64-player map is pretty CPU intensive, and RTS games with multiple AI's can trouble most CPU's too. My gaming laptop has a 2.3GHz i3 in it, runs everything I play very well but I don't take the mickey with settings or run either of the heavy CPU examples I just listed.

Either way, a change from 4.2 to 4.5 is a whopping 7% increase. If your game is dropping down to 30fps because of a CPU bottleneck, overclocking will give you 32fps! (in other words, neither you nor I are going to notice any difference!)

2) Soundcards:

I fall into the "audiophile for music, not fussed for gaming" category. You've got to understand that the difference in sound quality between an onboard codec and a dedicated card like the Xonar is going to be pretty small, and impossible to discern unless you're using high quality headphones to start off with.

7.1 or 5.1 headphones are rarely good quality. There's a whole subforum here on TR that brings up the issue quite frequently but almost everyone who's into their high-fidelity audio agrees that surround headphones don't offer high enough sound quality to make a dedicated card worth the effort. Since they either do their own signal processing, or they use multiple smaller speakers, you'll never get as good an experience as if you'd just spent the same money on a good quality set of stereo headphones.

Until you buy yourself a really high-quality pair of stereo speakers, onboard sound is fine. Even if you do buy a set of, say, Sennheiser HD595's AND a Xonar, you'll still find that the sampling rate and audio compression used by many game engines is the weakest link - all your expensive sound equipment is being wasted by the gaming equivalent of a lossy,128Kb/s mp3

Some people ask me why I have always enclosed my signature in spoiler tags; There is a good reason for that, but I can't elaborate without giving away the plot twist.

Jjay wrote:Good info here on a study about air cooling, just happen to be using a define r3 and very similar components to me

Excellent find!! I know that a side panel fan has the greatest effect on cooling. However, you need to consider some other things for your situation:1) The side panel of the R4 is insulated to reduce noise, if you pop out that square of insulation and put a fan in its place, you're basically negating the benefits of the insulation altogether. If you decide to use a side panel fan, my experience has shown that you should be looking for the quietest fan possible. Low CFM isn't much of an issue because of the short distance from the fan to the GPU/CPU area and the fan is blowing directly on/across these components.2) The front and bottom fan holes have dust filters. The side panel cutout does not. You can obviously buy a fan filter for the side panel, but it's an added cost. Filters on intake fans paired with a positive air pressure situation (ie more intake than exhaust) can significantly cut down on dust accumulating inside your case.

DPete27 wrote:The R4 focuses on quiet operation while the Obsidian 550D/650D cases are more "cooling performance" oriented. I don't think we're comparing apples to apples there. Plus the R4 (2 fans included) is $90, a 120mm fan is ~$10, and the Obsidian 550D (which comes with 3 fans) is $120. That's 3 fans difference. The Obsidian 650D is $146+, which is even further removed.

Without trying to muddy the waters too much, don't overlook the Obsidian 550D. It's much like the R4 in terms of fans, mountings and foam soundproofing but the build quality is higher, it's significantly quieter and it's better at GPU cooling than the R4. To clarify that, although the temperatures are very similar, the GPU fan speeds (the noisiest part of a system) were actually much lower in the Corsair.

And this is where it gets really interesting. The Corsair Obsidian 550D did a much better job of muffling the noise it generated and ran cooler in the process. Meanwhile the R4 actually seems a bit starved for air; our 12V fan setting, though anecdotally (just not immediately measurably) louder at idle, actually runs quieter at load as it's able to do a better job of keeping the internal heatsinks fed.

You might also be forgetting that this is the UK, not the US and relative pricing is not the same - here the R4 is £90 and the 550D is only £110, which is basically a price difference equal to about one decent quality fan!

The R4 is still a great choice (I've built using a couple) but you do have to keep a close eye on the overall cost after additional fans are added (assuming you're trying to keep an eye on the pennies, ofc).

Last edited by Chrispy_ on Mon Nov 12, 2012 4:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Some people ask me why I have always enclosed my signature in spoiler tags; There is a good reason for that, but I can't elaborate without giving away the plot twist.

My stated prices were in Pounds. I was using Scan and ebuyer.com, I was just too lazy to use the proper currency symbols. I did forget however, that the 550D had sound dampening. I knew the 650D doesn't have sound dampening so I was assuming the 550D was the same situation just a cheaper case. Thanks for clarifying.

Last edited by DPete27 on Mon Nov 12, 2012 5:19 pm, edited 2 times in total.

It's cool bro, you're doing well for someone looking at the prices from another country.What sometimes makes sense over here would be stupid stateside. You can blame those companies that just replace the $ for a € or a £ without bothering to do actual currency conversion

Some people ask me why I have always enclosed my signature in spoiler tags; There is a good reason for that, but I can't elaborate without giving away the plot twist.

Okay after much deliberation and taking into account both dpete and chrispy advice i have decided on:

Define r4 (£30 extra for 550d for 4-5 degrees cooler components didnt seem worth it to me, it is a great case though)Intel i5 3570kAsus p8z77-mdark rock 2 cpu cooler8gb corsair vengeance lp ramOcz agility 3 60gb ssd (decided to only use for win7 boot and maybe 1 or 2 programs and i could cut this and save £50 if its not worth while?)Wd 1tb caviar blackGigabyte gtx 670 windforce x3 (decided getting the 7950 plus the two games i would prefer is about the same price, but with slightly more performance)Win 7 home premiumCorsair ax 750 (Passive and fully modular i just thought this would be the best plus the 750w is only £10 more then the 650w)2 be quiet case fanssamsung optical drive

Came out at £1100 without monitor, i know its still more then your £800 build and only around £150 less then what i was originally going to pay but i think theres some better components then i originally planned.

How long do you think a system like this would last and be able to max most new games? Maybe 1-2 years?. Im not sure of the releases for next year though.

My only advice would be to change the SSD to at least a 120GB one. Typically, the smaller SSD's are slower and cost much more per GB. Even if you don't think you need the space now, for only £20 you will get more performance and you may not realise that with 8GB of RAM you are going to lose around 16GB of space for the swapfile/hibernation file. If/when you upgrade to 32GB of RAM you will also have big problems on a 60GB drive without disabling hibernation and limiting the swapfile.

I definitely wouldn't drop the SSD altogether. It's is (in many people's opinion) the single most important part of a performance system.

As for longevity, that build should run games at very high settings for a good long while. I wouldn't get to stressed if it chugs a bit at Max/Ultra settings.Some games will always chug on absolute max settings, but a lot of game settings suffer from diminishing returns. Certainly at 1920x1080p you ought to get max settings in any current games and future games for the next couple of years, but I don't have a working crysal ball

Don't forget that some games are just badly optimised. If you crank settings and resolution up high enough even a $999 GTX690 will struggle in current games.

Some people ask me why I have always enclosed my signature in spoiler tags; There is a good reason for that, but I can't elaborate without giving away the plot twist.

Thanks again chrispy, that's another reason i went for the 670 over the 7950 i thought it could be slightly more future proof.

I hate to drag this thread on longer but i was having a look at the eBay ips monitors you were talking about, would you be able to link me to the monitor you use/would recommend the most, the prices are all similar on TA planet but im not sure what the difference is between them.

Jjay wrote:Ocz agility 3 60gb ssd (decided to only use for win7 boot and maybe 1 or 2 programs and i could cut this and save £50 if its not worth while?)

I'd say go with the 120GB SSD as well. 60GB is a little too tight, some programs still don't give you the choice of install drive.if you are sticking to the guns with the 60GB then forget using it as an OS drive and use it as a Smart Response cache.

You're getting the same panel as put into an £899 Apple Cinema display, but you're not getting the same build quality on the chassis, the same after-sales support, nor are you being guaranteed a zero-defect panel.I still think it's a bargain, even with all of that taken into consideration.

If you don't like the Achieva Shimian, I know the same Philips S-IPS 2560x1440 panel also goes into the Yamakasi Catleap Q270 (simliar price) and the Crossover 27Q Pivot (more expensive, but comes with a better stand)

Some people ask me why I have always enclosed my signature in spoiler tags; There is a good reason for that, but I can't elaborate without giving away the plot twist.

Although there seems to be some conflicting reviews the only things im worried about was ghosting when gaming, the 8ms response time and since its 1920x1200 wont it zoom in during games to fill the screen and reduce the image quality?

The Ultrasharps are fine screens, but that is an older model which is why it's cheap and yes - you probably will notice some smearing on that one.You simply will not get Korean screen picture quality at under £400 if you deviate from those models that harvest unwanted 'Apple' 8-bit, S-IPS 6ms panels.

The Ultrasharp U2312HM is highly rated and available for under £200 from AmazonThe Asus PA238Q from cclonline.com is more expensive but supposed to be one of the faster panels that you can get for a decent price in the UK.The Viewsonic VX2336s-LED is cheap, because it has a very basic stand but the 6ms IPS panel is of good quality and it's picked up a few awards for value - pick up two from Amazon for under £240!

For some reason all the 1920x1080 models offering a game-friendly 16:9 aspect are 23.6" not 24", so they get listed as 23" screens, but I don't think the difference is worth worrying about.

Some people ask me why I have always enclosed my signature in spoiler tags; There is a good reason for that, but I can't elaborate without giving away the plot twist.

Check out the 23" Asus VS239H-P. It has a 6-bit e-IPS screen with 5ms response time. I just got one a month ago and it's much better than my old TN panel. e-IPS obviously doesn't have the color accuracy of a full 8-bit IPS panel, but it's better than any TN panel and they do tend to have quicker response times than 8-bit IPS. All-in-all, e-IPS would be somewhere between TN and 8-bit IPS. (Here's a review)

Thanks dpete i was thinking of going with the asus vs248h but im not exactly sure what the difference between the vs248h and the vs248h-p is, they seem identical but one is more expensive then the other:

Jjay wrote:Thanks dpete i was thinking of going with the asus vs248h but im not exactly sure what the difference between the vs248h and the vs248h-p is, they seem identical but one is more expensive then the other:

With 16:9 you will never have problemsWith 16:10 you get various results based on the game.

Some games work perfectly and actually extend your vision without distorting or narrowing your FOV (pretty rare, actually)Some games fill the screen but crop the edges off giving you a smaller field of view (most common for FPS and RTS games)Some games actually stretch the image, distorting it - this is also pretty rare though.Some games waste your screen space by putting black bars top and bottom (you can do this yourself by setting the res to 1080p, usually).

I would say only get a 16:10 screen if you are okay with either black bars, or a restricted, narrowed view of the game. Obviously some fps games have FOV sliders to compensate for this, but those games are in the minority.

By going 16:10 you will find a lot of media and games will be sub-optimal. It's a compromise that trades desktop/working/reading space for gameplay immersion. If you plan to do a lot of work and web-reading then 16:10 is undoubtedly the better resolution.

Some people ask me why I have always enclosed my signature in spoiler tags; There is a good reason for that, but I can't elaborate without giving away the plot twist.